


Continue

by Zarla



Category: Left 4 Dead
Genre: Amnesia, Female Characters, Gen, Non-sentient, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-11 07:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zarla/pseuds/Zarla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world was split into two factions. Uninfected had to be killed or bitten, and infected were irrelevant. They did not matter.<br/>There was no reason a Hunter should have been following her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Continue

**Author's Note:**

> Original characters. Set when they're both infected. More information on them [here](http://www.ashido.com/huntersmoker/).

Someone was following her.

Her understanding of what that entailed was limited. The world was split into two categories: infected and uninfected. Uninfected had to be killed or bitten, and infected were irrelevant. To be followed by someone uninfected meant she was in potential danger depending on whether or not they had some kind of weapon.

To be followed by an infected meant nothing to her, but it was something she noticed nonetheless.

She existed for only one purpose: spreading the infection. She would do that in any way she possibly could. Those that didn't share her affliction shone like a beacon in her dim and rage-tinged world, the _wrong_ness of them clear from even great distances away. She could hear them, smell them, track them down and when they were in range, she'd launch her tongue to bring them to her, or choke them to death if they got stuck along the way.

She'd bring them to her and if they refused to settle she'd claw at them until they stopped moving, and if they fell quiet she would move on to the next. If the infection took, the rage and urgency would ease and she would leave them be, limp away to her next target.

This was all that she existed for. This was and always had been her only purpose. Spread the infection.

That and stay alive. She had to survive to keep spreading the disease, after all. Her sense of self-preservation was not finely honed, but it was more intact than most of the other infected around her. They rushed headlong into danger, screaming and squealing, charging into flames and bullets and dying quickly. They did not think to save themselves -- the infection ate so far into their minds that that part of them did not survive. Their lives were violent and short, but that would not do for her.

She had a purpose, and the infection had done its damage selectively enough to help her achieve that purpose. She could still recognize danger, which definitely put her in the minority. When she heard the sound of gunfire, when bullets pocked against the bricks near her, she still had enough sense left in the remnants of her brain to think to hide somewhere until it stopped.

When bullets struck her, she hid and waited for the uninfected to leave. When she was injured, she kept away from them until she felt strong enough to again risk herself.

She survived longer than those further gone, and she served her purpose. She killed and stalked and waited. She stood on high rooftops at night, choking and coughing around her tongue, waiting for an unwise civilian to leave the shelter of their hiding spots, their safe rooms. She hid inside buildings, in scattered rooms in hallways, behind doors and windows, waiting for the unwary to walk into her line of sight. She lurked in the sewers, watching through the grates for potential victims to walk by, for an ankle to present an easy target.

This was all that mattered, all she had left. The disease left her with nothing else -- no memories, no understanding, barely any sentient awareness of herself or what she was doing. Only that that would allow her to kill and keep killing until her body gave out or she was killed herself.

It gave her the ability to know when to act, when to snatch the unsuspecting from high places and drag them down so their spines snapped, when to grab those who fell far enough behind so that their friends could not rescue them, when to pull victims through flames so their skin burned and turned black and they stopped fighting her faster. When she missed, her tongue flying wide, it gave her enough understanding to hide where they could not see her until it retracted and she could try again.

It gave her that, and not much else.

She did not think as most people understood thinking -- she could not think anymore. That part of her had been destroyed, warped along with her limbs so she stood tall above the others and limped when she walked, one leg refusing to bend properly.

The world was divided into two categories. One was a threat, the other was unimportant. If her weaker counterparts got in her way, she'd cut them down with a swipe of her claws and they'd fall before her. They fought amongst themselves, lay down on the streets, leaned against the walls near her, sobbed and vomited and died around her, and it was of no concern to her. They were already infected -- her work was already done.

They had no reason to follow her.

The first time she saw the other, it was when she had tried to catch an unsuspecting victim. She was closer to him than she would have liked, but the urgent need to spread the disease was too strong when she was this close and she had to do something. When he walked by the corner of the building, she lashed out her tongue to catch him. He turned as if he knew she was there, ducked below the coils of her tongue and shoved her. She stumbled, her gangly and uneven frame making it difficult for her to regain her balance quickly.

She hacked angrily, growling as she tried to straighten back up to try again, and he was pointing a gun at her. Retract and try again, quickly, or else-

Before he could shoot her, some screaming thing fell from the sky on top of him, slamming him down into the asphalt with a loud crunch. The thing tore into him, ripping flesh into ribbons and spraying blood everywhere with wild abandon, cackling. In moments he was dead, and the threat was passed.

She stood there, and the thing turned to look at her. The other was also infected -- no warning triggered in her mind, no instinctual desire to maim and kill. They had their eyes covered by a hood with cat ears, their face and hands streaked with blood. She knew this type -- they shared the same higher purpose that their weaker counterparts did not. The same fleeting remnants of self-awareness, just enough to keep them alive to fulfill their specific function.

The ones who kept their eyes covered climbed and leapt, eviscerating those who were uninfected with teeth and claws before jumping away to hunt again. She'd seen them before, encountered them, ignored them because they had little to do with her. She did not need to infect or kill them -- they were meaningless. Like the big ones that burst, or the small ones that wept, or the huge ones that smashed everything.

The hooded newcomer looked at her, sitting in a pile of gore that had once been a person, and raised the corners of her mouth to reveal sharp bloodstained teeth.

She growled back at her as best she could around her tongue and moved to turn away. She would not fight with her. She wasn't as far gone as the weaker ones.

The hooded one tilted her head at her, like a dog, then she was making a hoarse and high-pitched repetitive sound that she was too far gone to recognize as laughter. She tensed and leapt against the side of the building, and in moments she had bounded her way up and above, out of sight, screaming the entire way.

She watched her go, then found a pipe she could use to climb up herself. Back to surveying the street for further victims.

She didn't have the capacity to think of it as strange or unusual. She didn't have the capacity to think anymore.

Kill the uninfected or spread the infection. That was all that was left.

She saw her again, and it was hard to say when it was as she didn't understand the concept of time any more aside from light and dark. She was limping through an empty building, tracking the sounds of someone talking in a nearby alleyway. Talking meant uninfected -- she and her counterparts had lost the ability to speak, and the ability to comprehend it. But she could recognize it as something she and the others could not do, and that meant she had to kill them.

Something moved in the shadows near her, and she turned to look with her one remaining eye. No mental warning -- not a threat. Another infected, and it was that hooded one with the cat ears.

They crept closer to her, sniffing the air. She growled around her tongue, and they did not seem dissuaded. They came close enough to her to paw at her leg, her arm, still sniffing like she was looking for something, and she swiped at her, snarling. The other woman leapt out of range, making that odd laughing sound again, and then she jumped from wall to wall to the rafters above, perching there with her teeth showing for a few moments before vanishing out the skylight.

Distracted as she was, she didn't notice that the uninfected she'd been tracking had slipped away from her. She could no longer hear them, so she shuffled her way back into the building to look for more.

Several times she would catch motion behind or around her, and turn and glimpse the hooded one with cat ears somewhere nearby before she vanished. She was following her, as much as she could understand that concept with her ruined mind.

It meant nothing to her, but it was still happening.

She saw the hooded one again, at some point, when she was on a rooftop waiting for someone below to come close enough for her to reach. She knew how far her tongue would go -- she would be dead now otherwise.

She heard someone near her, and turned to see that same hooded woman beside her. The blood on her had dried to dark red against the fabric of her clothes, the area around her mouth stained black and flaking. She set her hands against the edge of the roof, her fingers curved and dirty, red streaking up her forearms.

She recognized her as a hunting one, as an infected that was not a threat, the same one from before but more than that was hard to say.

She turned her attention back to the street below them. Someone ventured out into the open, their differentness standing out against the hordes of infected around them in her rage-red vision like a green beacon, demanding that she do something about it. Then another joined them, staying close behind the first. They did tend to work in groups. Sometimes it worked to their advantage.

The one beside her ducked down, snarling, and then leapt into the air. She watched her descend, landing on one of those below with a crunch she could hear even from this great distance.

The other readied themselves to rescue their compatriot, and she launched her tongue to stop them. It wrapped around them, dragging them away, and she pulled him up against the side of the building, waiting for his struggles to slowly die down as she choked him to death. When he was dead, the pheromones in her mind screaming at her to kill and infect diminishing, she saw that the hooded one was again beside her. The fresh red of blood stood out against her grey skin, and again she tilted her head at her. Like she was staring at her, but she'd seen beneath their hoods before. There was nothing there.

The idea that they had worked together, had mutually cooperated to deal with a common threat, was almost too complicated for them to grasp.

Almost.

It would take a few more instances of them happening across each other, the hooded one always following along behind her a little distance, before the idea would begin to solidify, the cause and effect connecting in the weakened remnants of their minds. When she fell through the glass roof of a building, the hooded one came soon after her, tackling the man behind her while she caught the one in front. When the huge one roared and threw cars across the street, cutting through mobs of their weaker brethren and taking out uninfected in a single blow, the two of them caught the stragglers who attempted to run.

She'd catch the unwary, and sometimes the hooded one would tear them out of her grip so she could rip them apart herself, so she'd move on to others. When she pulled one off a narrow bridge, the hooded one would land on them from above, forcing them off the edges while she tore apart the one remaining.

They had only one purpose -- infect the uninfected, or kill the ones who were immune. The virus had specifically changed them, them and the few others like them, for that purpose. Had given them the awareness and skill to use their specific talents to help spread their disease as far and as quickly as possible, and that was all.

That was all they knew.

When the two of them were together, when they coordinated their attacks, they killed faster. They killed more of them, and they were able to avoid danger more easily. One could cover the other's escape, compensate for the other's weak points.

Working together spread the disease more quickly and kept them both alive. So they began to work together, although it couldn't exactly have been called a conscious decision. They were, after all, only barely conscious. They just barely had what they needed to survive and do their work.

That was all that mattered. Kill the immune, infect the vulnerable.

And as they ran into each other more frequently, used their limited awareness to help the other achieve their goals, something was added to their list of directives. Kill the immune, infect the vulnerable, stay alive.

Help your partner.

When someone shoved the hooded one off of a victim, readying their pistols to finish her off, she caught them from above, dragged them away.

When the uninfected threw fire near her, setting her alight, the hooded one tackled her into a puddle of water, pawing at it to try and put her out.

When the hooded one miscalculated a jump and missed, she caught her with her tongue and lowered her to the ground.

When someone shot at her, the hooded one was never far behind them. When she heard the hooded one yelp, she was there to catch who was threatening her.

Together, they killed far more than they would have apart. They lived longer than those who worked alone. It kept them together when they had lost any capacity for empathy or sympathy or affection, when there was no humanity left between them.

When connection should have been impossible, somehow they stayed together.

Back in a world that did not exist anymore, replaced only with rage and death and the infection, perhaps she would have found it fitting.


End file.
